(Author's Note: I'm assuming, for the sake of this story, that the Doctor lost River not long after losing the Ponds, and that the combination of losing his whole new family at once was enough to push him over the edge, and change him into what we see in "The Snowmen.")

—

A child dashed out of the alleyway and rebounded off a solid surface. He looked up, his eyes went wide, and he tried to dodge around.

A large hand grabbed him up by the back of his grubby jacket. "Where are you going, Spawn!"

"Let me go! Let me go!" the child flailed and kicked thin, patched-soled shoes at his captor.

"Just a moment," a cultured female voice said. A black gloved hand reached out and intercepted the short metal rod the child was swinging at Strax.

She pulled it away and looked at it. "Where did you get this?" she demanded of the boy.

The child clammed up and hung sullenly in Strax's grasp.

" 'Ere now, you answer the lady," a high, cockney voice said from the side. A female form, dressed all in black leather, emerged from the fog.

The boy goggled at the familiar accent, and the startling clothes. He started thrashing again, reaching for the rod. "That's mine! Gimme! 'E don't need it no more!"

"Where did you get this!" Strax demanded, shaking the boy like a marionette.

The urchin kicked and squirmed and finally tossed a nod back toward the alleyway.

Strax dropped him. He ran off.

They all three looked at each other, and entered the alleyway. Jenny pulled her katana as they entered the darksome crevice between buildings. It widened out after a few feet.

They found nothing but the normal refuse, and a pile of rags against one wall.

They skirted past. But Jenny stopped, and looked down. She reached out, heard soft weeping, low guttural groans like those of a drunk. She turned the pile over, and a ravaged face looked up at her.

Eyes bloodshot from weeping, face silver with dried tears, a bowtie, bedraggled and filthy.

"Doctor!" Vastra knelt down beside him, sonic screwdriver in hand. "What happened?"

Fresh sobs tore out of him, he turned away, curling toward the wall, covering his head with his hands, chapped, filthy, probably freezing. The sounds ripped out of him like shards of glass.

"Doctor?" Jenny said hesitantly, helplessly, she put her hand on his shoulder.

"Nooooo!" he moaned, he turned even farther away, into the muck and gunk of the London alleyway.

Madame Vastra stood up. "Take him Strax," she ordered. She pocketed the sonic screwdriver.

Strax reached down and threw the limp, stinking Time Lord over his shoulder.

The soldier marched out of the alleyway, the two women followed him.

"Whatever could have happened to him?" Jenny asked quietly.

—

They took him home, bathed him, tucked him into a night shirt, and into a deep feather bed.

He cried the whole time. Silent tears.

As Jenny and Vastra tucked in the eiderdown on each side of the Doctor, Strax stomped to the end of the bed and stood at attention.

"Sir!" he barked. "This is conduct unbecoming an officer!" he said with righteous indignation.

The Doctor, tears still leaking out of his eyes, looked down at him, and suddenly started laughing, weak, hysterical laughter, that devolved into hiccups as he put his hands over his face.

It was the first response they'd got out of him besides tears.

"Doctor," Vastra said, leaning over him, "Where is the Tardis?"

He flipped a hand up at the sky and away, in a throwaway gesture. Jenny and Vastra looked at each other at that vague clue. Jenny shrugged.

"Doctor," Jenny asked gently. "What happened?"

He finally lowered his hands, they flopped onto the eiderdown. He looked up at them with eyes deepsunk and devastated.

A tear leaked out of one eye.

"They're all gone."

—

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